There he goes again! The President was applauded the other week, and almost everybody (including those being harassed to support the silly idea) felt relieved, when he declared he was going to downgrade CONCORD, Cha-cha, or Charter change from his list of urgent priorities.
What happened last Saturday at the "Philippine Forum" in Clark, Angeles, was both dismaying and disappointing. After boosting his ratings, the President once again shot himself in the foot.
Instead of talking about some sensible initiatives for a change, like decisive measures to jumpstart our stalled economy, Erap told his astonished listeners -- some 150 chief executive officers from government, business, academe, culture and media -- that he had NOT dropped CONCORD, or his obsession with amending the Constitution.
Now, once more, the President looks urong-sulong, pa-ekis-ekis, and yo-yo. I hope he's not being compared by people (in their minds at least) with the little boy who had a tummy-ache, swore off gluttony and fatty foods -- then, the moment he was feeling better, started pigging out again.
For your own sake, if not for God's sake, Mr. President, stop talking about Charter change! The 1987 Constitution may be flawed, but the people fear that the cure might prove worse than the disease. So, please leave it alone.
Doesn't he get it? The most frightening and detested feature in his ill-advised CONCORD or Cha-cha initiative is his misbegotten conception that if we want to attract "foreign investment," we must change the Charter to enable foreigners to buy up land. Indeed, the tone of his Charter changes is that we're "for sale" to foreign money and international vested interests.
With so many millions of Filipinos landless or dispossessed, the very notion that aliens might buy up the entire archipelago, reduce us all to peons and tenants, then, ultimately, kick us out of our own country, may contain elements of paranoia -- but those apprehensions are very real. Even if the President and his Merry Men keep on promising that there's no danger of that, nobody believes them -- not even the toadies and sycophants who'll jump albeit reluctantly to the President's command on that thorny issue.
Let's be direct, once and for all, about WHOM the Filipinos fear.
True or not, there is widespread suspicion that it is the "Chinese" who want to buy up the land, overcrowded as they already are in both mainland China and Taiwan.
Daily, on radio-television and in the newspapers, news comes of ships being intercepted by the United States Coast Guard and Navy, the Canadian Navy, the Australian Navy and maritime patrols, full to the gunwhales with crammed, hopeful, illegal Chinese being smuggled into those "lands of milk and honey."
Similar stories have come out of Central and South America, with tramp streamers and freighters slipping through the Pacific Coast naval patrols in those nations, with Sino illegals either infiltrating northwards or establishing crowded colonies of Chinese.
It's no secret that over the past two decades, boatloads of "warm bodies" have been sneaking into this country with the help of greedy politicians and Immigration crooks, many of the illicit arrivals already provided with Filipino documents and identities. Why do you think so many thousands of genuine blank Philippine Passports have been stolen from the Department of Foreign Affairs itself or DFA branch offices in northern Luzon? Speaking of the North, from our Fuga Island on a clear day you can already see the tip of Taiwan.
Are the Chinese already here in force? Even their Triad rivalries are being played out, with kidnapping, violence, and murder, from Metro Manila to Baguio, and down south to the Visayas.
The awful truth is that Mr. Estrada's Charter amendment specifically designed to permit foreigners to purchase and own land is part and parcel (even if intrue, that's the overriding anxiety) of a Chinese "conspiracy" to take over the Philippines by hook, crook, and now, through legality.
This is an old plot. It existed during the Marcos regime, down through the Cory and Ramos regimes, but has escalated, people aver, during the Estrada administration.
Appearances may, of course, deceive. But it's a popular perception that President Erap is surrounded by too many ethnic Filipino-Chinese taipans and advisers, chums, and even compadres in Taiwan as well as friends on the mainland. The Chief Executive may yell that this is a false picture. But again: That's what many Filipinos have nightmares about, not to mention the foreign, non-Chinese, business community.
So, scrap that stupid CONCORD, Sir Erap. Distance yourself decisively from it -- pronounce it dead, if not buried. The angst, the public fear may be irrational, but it exists and gnaws away at confidence in the present dispensation nonetheless.
By the way, the President is going to Beijing next May.
The conference in Clark was ably handled by half-Congressman, half-Cabinet member, newly-hatched Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel "Mar" A. Roxas II. It was pro-perly called, although it is a somewhat confusing title, "The Philippine Forum: Convergence in the Millennium."
There are already those who are saying it was a launch-pad for Mar Roxas's "future" drive for the Presidency of the Philippines, perhaps a term or two away from the present. Indeed, Mar has most of the qualities of a national leader -- after all, his grandfather and namesake, Manuel Acuña Roxas, was President of the Philippine Republic, and his late father, Senator Gerry Roxas, was Senate President.
Certainly adding credit to his pedigree was his maternal grandfather, the father of his mother Judy, the formidable J. Amado Araneta, whom I used to call "The Last Tycoon."
I dearly loved old Amading, who was one of my private mentors in the vagaries and treacheries of life and business. It was Amading, while whipping up a breakfast of eggs and "prohibited" bacon in his makeshift kitchen in his annex home next to the imposing "White House" in Quezon City, who counseled me: "Young man, never trust your relatives. Your relatives, even your next-of-kin, always feel it is their right to cheat you or steal from you!" I can't blame Amading for this sentiment. Only a year or two earlier, he had angrily closed down his huge "New Frontier" supermarket, one of the pioneer establishments in Cubao, when he discovered that relatives had fiddled with the books and purloined several million pesos from the cash boxes.
Amading had courage and a sometimes wicked sense of humor to the very end, even in the face of affliction and adversity. The last time I saw him in New York, we had lunch at that cafe overlooking the skating rink of the Rockefeller Center, you know the place with a golden statue of Prometheus bringing mankind the gift of fire, which he had stolen from the gods.
The old gentleman still had a moist eye for a neat ankle and even patted the hand of the pretty waitress appreciatively -- and to think he was in his 80s.
"Never give up without a fight," he chuckled. It was not an original thought, but coming from a grizzled old fighter, it was an unforgettable admonition.
With such men in his family to inspire him, I'm puzzled why "Mar" Roxas, as brilliant and personable as he is, is now acting like a wimp. Why did he announce that he would hang on to his Congressional seat (from Capiz) and his post as Majority Floor Leader in the House, until he was confirmed as DTI secretary by the Commission on Appointments?
What? As the Tagalog proverb scolds the wishy-washy as trying to "ride a banca simultaneously on two rivers", Mar is acting deplorably like a segurista.
What's he afraid of? That his peers, his fellow members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are out "to get him" and torpedo his appointment in the Commission? So what? He must go in there -- and fight! If he wins, he wins. If he loses, he loses. He can't even lose, even if he tried: Surely, if he's bypassed by the CA, President Estrada will reappoint him to the Cabinet -- again and again.
This issue is a test of Mar's strength of character, or lack of it. There's another Filipino saw that states: "Ang tunay na bakal ay sa apoy masusubukan." (True steel is best tested through fire). Is Mar true steel? Not the way he is behaving.
When his grandfather, Don Manuel Roxas, was ousted from the speakership of the House because of the ire and desire for vengeance of the great Manuel L. Quezon, then President, who was infuriated with Roxas's eloquent opposition, Roxas declared that "I fall from this podium -- but into the arms of my people!"
And, indeed, his supporters, admirers, and those touched by his gallantry carried him on their shoulders in triumph from the chamber.
Recapture that fighting spirit, Mar! Risk it all. Leadership is about being brave to do what's right, although your personal fortunes be crumbling all about you, and your enemies encircle you.